Along theses lines I was wondering the following two things with regard to
recorders:

>
>A better solution is to use line-in with an external mic.
>

What kind of microphones work with the line in? Do they have to be powered?
(My pc microphone didn't do anything).
and

>IMHO, recording at high quality with the built-in mic is a waste of time.
>The mic isn't good enough to support that quality. You'll probably get
>similar results at Quality 3 or 4 with 44.1 KHz, and longer battery life.

What are your best preferred recording settings that give best battery
life:performance ratio for the following situations: